The Music, Man

Film: Maestro
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on Fire!

Bradley Cooper appears desperate for validation. The man has 12 Oscar nominations, five for acting, but no joy yet. One has to imagine that there’s a part of him that is struggling mightily to live down his early years in front of the camera in some desperate attempt for legitimacy, but it’s not like other actors haven’t had to do this. Tom Hanks won consecutive Oscars, and the guy did Bachelor Party and The Money Pit. Maestro is Cooper’s latest attempt for Oscar glory, and while I’ve liked some of his work in the past, I’m unimpressed in general with this one.

The biggest reason for this is a variation of the reason I was so disappointed in The Theory of Everything. If someone is going to do a biopic of Stephen Hawking, you’d think that the focus would be on the man’s work—on the incredible things he was able to accomplish and the jumps forward he made in theory, but the film focused on his marriage. In much the same way, the biopic of Leonard Bernstein (Cooper) should focus on the man’s music—he redefined the American musical in significant ways—and it instead focuses on the fact that despite his marriage and three children, he evidently couldn’t get over his craving for “the d.”

This is not, then a movie about Leonard Bernstein’s music, but about his marriage and his frequent infidelities with men, and his relationship with Felicia (Carey Mulligan). Felicia Montealegre was an actress and successful in her own right, but the film portrays a relationship that is entirely about the work and successes of Bernstein himself. In a lot of respects, Maestro is very reminiscent of Capote in the sense that the central figure, while perhaps not a narcissist, is someone who is always going to be at the center of his own world and is always going to demand the spotlight in any situation. There’s a sense from the film that Bernstein is hugely talented and also completely insufferable because of that talent.

And so, the film feels wildly misfocused. Certainly Bernstein’s substance abuse issues, his incessant partying, his craving for attention, and his desperate need for the attention of men are important aspects of who Bernstein was and certainly influenced the music that he produced, but we get almost none of that music in the film. Sure, there are moments of it, but for a film about an incredibly influential and important American composer and conductor, there’s almost as much Tears for Fears as West Side Story. The most Bernstein music happens in the rather extensive credit sequence—substantial for a film with no actual effects.

Maestro is very much a film that continually puts me in mind of other films. In addition to the ones mentioned above, I am reminded of The Great Ziegfeld from the mid-1930s. That movie included a lot of the man’s life off of the stage as well, but it also spent a lot of time on his musical productions, which became the most memorable and best part of the film. Honestly, that’s what I was looking for, and I didn’t get it. And it’s a shame because there’s a lot of meat that could be in the final picture. For instance, Bernstein made Nixon’s list of enemies because he held a fundraiser for the Black Panthers. That’s a cool detail and something that would have made a great addition to the film.

This film represents three of Cooper’s Oscar nominations—one for Best Actor, one for Best Picture (he was one of the producers), and one for the screenplay, which he co-wrote. The film was co-produced by Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg.

It's also worth noting that for a film about Leonard Bernstein, the two most interesting performances come from women. The first is Carey Mulligan’s. She has top billing on the film, which she should. While the film is “about” Leonard Bernstein, it is very much from her point of view in a lot of respects. Mulligan has earned 3 Oscar nominations in her career, and I think she has genuinely earned all three, even if I didn’t love An Education as much as everyone else. She is the best part of this by a mile. The second interesting performance comes from Sarah Silverman as Bernstein’s sister Shirley. She’s not on screen much, but she’s memorable when she is, and she proves once again the rule that comedians can do drama because comedy is harder than drama.

In all honestly, of the 10 Best Picture nominees from the latest set of Oscars, Maestro was the one I was the least interested in seeing, and of the five I have now seen, it’s the one I’m the least likely to want to rewatch.

Why to watch Maestro: Leonard Bernstein was a genius.
Why not to watch: This is almost entirely not about his music.